Nature conservation, rural livelihoods, and territorial control in Andean Ecuador

The Ecuadorian sierra, or Andean region, has during recent decades witnessed a marked expansion of nature conservation initiatives. This paper explores the relations and tensions between this proliferation of conservation interventions and the struggles of rural Andean communities to assert territorial authority and to consolidate their livelihoods. Through an analysis of three rounds of conservation initiatives in an indigenous campesino cooperative in the south-central sierra, I argue for a conceptualization of the outcomes and trajectories of conservation as coproduced through histories of interaction between conservation actors and rural resource users. Within this analytical framework, I underscore the importance of taking into account the agency of rural communities, their historical landscape claims, and the dynamism of their livelihood interests.     

Land alienation,land tenure,and tourism in Vanuatu,a Melanesian Island nation

Land is a primary resource for international tourism development. The relation of indigenous systems of land tenure and the history of land alienation to tourism in Pacific Island nations, however, is problematic. Governments of some Pacific Island nations are now emphasizing the traditional land rights of indigenous people in determining land use for economic development. Land is a key resource for the local participation of Islanders in development, and indigenous land claims are a volatile political issue. There has been little substantive research on tourism and land tenure in Melanesia. This paper examines the history of the problem of land alienation, the nature of traditional land tenure, and the relation of current land claims to tourist development in Vanuatu. Land alienations are tied to modern tourist developments, and issues of land tenure are a central aspects of political debate in local cultures. Suggestions are offered for regional planning for tourism, and local control of tourist development and land use.     

Effects of common property resource utilization on wildlife conservation in Nigeria

A survey was conducted in 21 rural settlements to assess wildlife conservation under a common utilization. Wildlife was managed through traditional regulations to meet subsistence requirements for food, income, recreation and health care. However, the conditions under which common property resource utilization thrived: traditional beliefs, communal land tenure system and uncertain income streams were almost disintegrated by changes in land use and social attitudes.The resource base for rural economies, the natural vegetation, was in crisis of depletion and degradation due to modern techniques of agricultural and forestry production. A conservative strategy is suggested. Rural land use should be based on planned agroforestry practices: smallholder tree planting, protection and regeneration of indigenous plants with potential social and economic value, domestication of wild animals and ranching of game with livestock.     

Correlation analysis of NDVI dynamics and hydro-meteorological variables in growth period for four land use types of a water scarce area

As the characterization of primary productivity of wetland ecosystem, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) plays an important role in local ecosystem conservation for environmental management. In this paper, the correlations of NDVI and hydro-meteorological variables were studied in a water scarce area with emphasis on different land use types, namely water, wetland, residential land and farmland, during the growing seasons of 1999 and 2000. The significant NDVI changes were detected between spring and summer for all land use types. The correlation analysis revealed that the NDVI-temperature correlation (P?P?P?farmland > R_wetland > R_{residential land} > R_water for NDVI and precipitation correlations (P?water > R_wetland > R_residential land > R_farmland for NDVI and temperature correlations (P?相似文献   

Natural fisheries,marsh management,and mariculture: Complexity and conflict in Louisiana

Most of Louisiana’s economically important saltwater fishes and crustaceans spawn in the Gulf of Mexico, but their young must use the vast coastal marsh as their nursery. Marsh management in Louisiana usually consists of emplacement of levees and water-control structures in the marsh. These structures significantly reduce fisheries production and offshore recruitment. In addition, in 1987 private entities were authorized to use 32,380 ha of the marsh for experimental mariculture, which (if successful) will likewise lead to greatly reduced natural fisheries production and offshore recruitment. Private interests also nearly succeeded in legalizing entrapment and eventual harvest of the wild fisheries from 100,000 ha, and 20,000 ha, of the marsh in 1991 and 1992, respectively. The effects of all these threats to natural fisheries production are further complicated by Louisiana's confused legal situation regarding coastal land ownership.     

The Environmental benefits and costs of conservation tillage

 Every production practice, including conservation tillage, has positive or negative environmental consequences that may involve air, land, water, and/or the health and ecological status of wildlife. The negative impacts associated with agricultural production, and the use of conventional tillage systems in particular, include soil erosion, energy use, leaching and runoff of agricultural chemicals, and carbon emissions. Several of these impacts are quantified. The conclusions suggest that the use of conservation tillage does result in less of an adverse impact on the environment from agricultural production than does conventional tillage by reducing surface water runoff and wind erosion. Additionally, wildlife habitat will be enhanced to some extent with the adoption of conservation tillage and the benefits to be gained from carbon sequestration will depend on the soil remaining undisturbed. Finally, further expansion of conservation tillage on highly erodible land will unquestionably result in an increase in social benefits, but the expected gains will be modest.     

Estimation of soil erosion using RUSLE in Caijiamiao watershed,China

Soil erosion is a serious environmental and production problem in China. In particular, natural conditions and human impact have made the Chinese Loess Plateau particularly prone to intense soil erosion area. To decrease the risk on environmental impacts, there is an increasing demand for sound, and readily applicable techniques for soil conservation planning in this area. This work aims at the assessment of soil erosion and its spatial distribution in hilly Loess Plateau watershed (northwestern China) with a surface area of approximately 416.31 km². This study was conducted at the Caijiamiao watershed to determine the erosion hazard in the area and target locations for appropriate initiation of conservation measures using the revised universal soil loss equation (RUSLE). The erosion factors of RUSLE were collected and processed through a geographic information system (GIS)-based approach. The soil erosion parameters were evaluated in different ways: The R-factor map was developed from the rainfall data, the K-factor map was obtained from the soil map, the C-factor map was generated based on Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper image and spectral mixture analysis, and a digital elevation model with a spatial resolution of 25 m was derived from topographic map at the scale of 1:50,000 to develop the LS-factor map. Support practice P factor was from terraces that exist on slopes where crops are grown. By integrating the six-factor maps in GIS through pixel-based computing, the spatial distribution of soil loss in the study area was obtained by the RUSLE model. The results showed that spatial average soil erosion at the watershed was 78.78 ton ha^?1 year^?1 in 2002 and 70.58 ton ha^?1 year^?1 in 2010, while the estimated sediment yield was found to be 327.96 × 10⁴ and 293.85 × 10⁴ ton, respectively. Soil erosion is serious, respectively, from 15 to 35 of slope degree, elevation area from 1,126 to 1,395 m, in the particular area of soil and water loss prevention. As far as land use is concerned, soil losses are highest in barren land and those in waste grassland areas are second. The results of the study provide useful information for decision maker and planners to take appropriate land management measures in the area. It thus indicates the RUSLE–GIS model is a useful tool for evaluating and mapping soil erosion quantitatively and spatially at a river watershed scale on a cell basis in Chinese Loess Plateau and for planning of conservation practices.     

Integrating Vulnerability Into Estuarine Conservation Planning: Does the Data Treatment Method Matter?

Protected areas will more efficiently protect biodiversity if threats to the persistence of populations are addressed. Seagrass meadows are globally regarded as critical habitats because of their ecosystem services, human use values, and their diminishing extent. While selecting priority areas for conservation of seagrass meadows is largely aimed at maximizing the protection of their biodiversity, little attention is paid to consider simultaneously the representation of biodiversity and the minimization of threats. This study developed and tested an approach for integrating vulnerability of seagrass meadows to anthropogenic disturbance with the selection of estuarine-protected areas. Vulnerability was measured by data on different land use types in subcatchments. Conservation value was measured by irreplaceability, diversity indices, and rarity of macroinvertebrate species in seagrass meadows. Vulnerability was incorporated into conservation planning by plotting grid cell scores for conservation value versus their scores for vulnerability. The results showed that the performance of the model for the integration of vulnerability into estuarine conservation planning was sensitive to the data treatment. The vulnerability of seagrass meadows and accordingly the arrangement of priority areas for conservation and management attention may change if more information is incorporated into the measurement of vulnerability.     

Concentrations and isotope ratios of carbon,nitrogen and sulfur in ocean-floor basalts

Fresh submarine basalt glasses from Galapagos Ridge, FAMOUS area, Cayman Trough and Kilauea east rift contain 22 to 160 ppm carbon and 0.3 to 2.8 ppm nitrogen, respectively, as the sums of dissolved species and vesicle-filling gases (CO₂ and N₂). The large range of variation in carbon content is due to combined effect of depth-dependency of the solubility of carbon in basalt melt and varying extents of vapour loss during magma emplacement as well as in sample crushing. The isotopic ratios of indigenous carbon and nitrogen are in very narrow ranges,?6.2 ± 0.2% relative to PDB and +0.2 ± 0.6 %. relative to atmospheric nitrogen, respectively. In basalt samples from Juan de Fuca Ridge, however, isotopically light carbon (δ¹³C = around ?24%.) predominates over the indigenous carbon; no indigenous heavy carbon was found. Except for Galapagos Ridge samples, these ocean-floor basalts contain 670 to 1100 ppm sulfur, averaging 810 ppm, in the form of both sulfide and sulfate, whereas basalts from Galapagos Ridge are higher in both sulfur (1490 and 1570 ppm) and iron (11.08% total iron as FeO). The δ³⁴S values average +0.3 ± 0.5%. with average fractionation factor between sulfate and sulfide of +7.4 ± 1.6%.. The sulfate/sulfide ratios tend to increase with increasing water content of basalt, probably because the oxygen fugacity increases with increasing water content in basalt melt.     

Ch’ixi landscapes: Indigeneity and capitalism in the Bolivian Chaco

Contemporary debates around the ontological turn have pitted efforts to take indigenous ontologies seriously against demands to make visible the forms of dispossession and environmental suffering that characterize the (post)colonial and capitalist present. Meanwhile, a growing array of governmental projects seeks to identify and protect indigenous ontologies in the face of capitalist development processes, including through forms of collective tenure. How can we make sense of such initiatives, and what kind of territories do they encounter and produce? This paper engages this question ethnographically through an examination of everyday life in a legally recognized Native Community Land in the Bolivian Chaco. Drawing on Bolivian Aymara scholar Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s notion of ch’ixi, I argue that indigenous territories are neither ontologically separate from, nor entirely subsumed by, capitalist development processes. Rather, they are subject to multiple land values, ontologies, and investments. A contested indigenous land titling process, capitalist labor relations, hydrocarbon compensation money, and efforts to maintain relations with spirit beings are all interwoven in the fabric of Guaraní everyday life. Such ch’ixi landscapes emerge at the confluence of capitalist efforts at rendering territories investable, governmental efforts at managing dispossession, and Guaraní efforts to maintain life and exercise territorial sovereignty amidst contradictory processes of (post)colonial governmentality.     

Households’ willingness to reduce pollution threats in the Poyang Lake region,southern China

Environmental threats to wetland ecosystems are increasing, and these ecosystems are becoming increasingly sensitive to human impacts, leading to deterioration of these already fragile ecosystems. Poyang Lake is the largest freshwater lake in China and one of the most important wetlands in the world. However, water pollution and related environmental changes have increasingly drawn the scientific community's attention. The goal of this paper is to provide insights into the environmental threats to the Poyang Lake region as perceived from the households’ perspective, and to investigate their willingness to pay for conservation of the lake's environment. We collected both primary and secondary data through a questionnaire delivered to 270 households and analysis of existing water monitoring data. The major threat confronting the Poyang lake region is water pollution; water quality, as represented by the total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) concentrations and by chemical oxygen demand (COD), suggests a moderate to severe degree of eutrophication. The situation has worsened in recent years, particularly due to high TN and TP in agricultural drainage water caused by increasingly intensive use of chemical fertilizers by local farmers. Most households were willing to pay to mitigate these threats, but the magnitude of the payment was related to a farmer's dependence on the lake for their production and daily life. The results of our analysis will help managers develop more effective environmental management policies.     

Modeling hydrological ecosystem services and tradeoffs: a case study in Baiyangdian watershed, China

Policy makers and scientists consider that land use strategies are designed to provide direct benefits to people by protecting vital ecosystem services. However, due to lack of information and evaluation methods, there is no effective and systematic tool for assessing tradeoffs between direct human benefits and ecosystem services. Land use changes influence ecosystem properties, processes and components, which are the basis for providing services. Five alternative land use scenarios (no conversion of agricultural lands, no urban expansion, agricultural expansion, forestry expansion, and riparian reforestation) were modeled for the Baiyangdian watershed, China, a densely populated, highly modified watershed with serious water shortage and pollution problems. The model InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) is designed to inform decisions about natural resource management, with an aim to align economic forces with conservation. Three ecosystem services (agricultural production, hydropower production, and water quality) were modeled to balance direct benefits and hydrological ecosystem services using InVEST. The results showed that: hydropower production was the greatest in the forestry expansion, but the lowest in agricultural expansion; agricultural production was reduced the most in forestry expansion, while retained the most in riparian reforestation. Riparian reforestation also provided the highest N and P retention and lowest N and P exportation. Riparian reforestation was the optimal land use strategy, since it protected and enhanced the vital ecosystem services without undermining direct human benefits. This research presents an initial analytical framework for integrating direct human benefits and ecosystem services in policy planning and illustrates its application. Although there are important potential tradeoffs between ecosystem services, this systematic planning framework offers a means for identifying valuable synergies between conservation and development.     

Investment’s rituals: “Grassroots” extractivism and the making of an indigenous gold mine in the Peruvian Andes

What happens when an Andean family finds gold on its land? As mining corporations rapidly claim surrounding properties on rugged terrain near Mount Mismi, a water-supplying deity overlooking Peru’s Colca Valley, the Flores family is springing into action to beat the Buenaventura mining company to the gold that might be hidden within. The global land rush has been pronounced in Peru, whose mineral resources have largely been responsible for rapid economic growth but whose profits remain restricted to a relative few. The Flores family, many of its members underemployed, are engaged in a costly race against time to constitute themselves as an enterprise, rent equipment, formalize their title, and fulfill other rituals necessary for legitimating their own effort to access what they see as their small share of Peru’s mineral wealth, against the specter of state subsoil rights and corporate power. They are simultaneously racing to seek the land’s permission, via rituals like the pago a la tierra (offering to the earth) and the provision of spiritually infused chicha (fermented maize and barley). Through an ethnographic focus on the exemplary case of the Flores property and the diverse rituals essential to extracting its prosperity, this article asks how the Peruvian state’s categories of legitimate land use articulate with a perspective acknowledging land as a powerful non-human agent with its own requirements for becoming investable. I argue that beyond a simple dichotomy between official and indigenous rituals of legitimation, the Flores’ urgent race to render land investable puts multivalent ontologies and ethics to work together. In doing so, I further argue, family members draw on years of engagement with development projects and non-governmental organizations focused on promoting explicitly indigenous entrepreneurship. They are thus forging new interpretations of identity-based empowerment that complicate any stereotypical relationship between environmental sustainability and indigeneity.     

Coca’s haunting presence in the agrarian politics of the Bolivian lowlands

This essay explores the role of the coca economy in the politics of basic foodstuff production in the lowlands department of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Efforts throughout the 1980s and 1990s to diminish the coca economy in Santa Cruz have led to a significant decrease in the physical presence of coca in the region. This paper argues that while coca has been physically eradicated, the relationships and inequalities that characterized the coca economy at its height in the 1980s and 1990s continue to haunt present-day agrarian relations and decisions in the region. Using the framework of haunting and drawing on stories narrating the intersections between the livelihood challenges of rice farmers in the province of Ichilo, Santa Cruz, regional agrarian politics, and regional-state governance conflicts, I explore how the coca economy matters to the dynamics of principal agrarian foodstuff production. While coca cultivation in Ichilo is expressly assigned to the past and modern agrarian politics are explicitly articulated as “post-coca,” this paper offers a reminder about how the coca economy continues to shape present day agrarian politics, even as it is considered “successfully” eradicated.     

SAR polarimetric decomposition with ALOS PALSAR-1 for agricultural land and other land use/cover classification: case study in Rajasthan,India

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has operational applications in crop mapping and monitoring in many countries due to the distinct backscatter signature at various stages of crop growth. Polarimetric analysis of SAR data from different satellites was used for information extraction from different types of scatters in imaged terrain. The scattering processes were analyzed through the received scatter matrix derived from the target decomposition of SAR data. Three decomposition techniques, namely Freeman–Durden, Cloude–Pottier and Touzi decomposition of the ALOS PALSAR-1 data, were used in this study to extract land use/cover information with a specific emphasis on agriculture. The decomposed output parameters from these techniques were classified with supervised classifier of support vector machine (SVM) using region of interest (ROI) selected land use/cover classes. An accuracy assessment for the classified output was carried out using the ROI. The Ramgarh village in Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan with the predominance of agricultural land, sand dunes and settlements was chosen as the study area. Freeman–Durden decomposition resulted in the highest overall accuracy of about 85% in the land use/cover classification among the three decomposition techniques adopted in the study. It was also observed that the accuracy of land use/cover mapping derived from Cloude–Pottier and Touzi decompositions improved with the use of eigenvalues in the SVM classification. Higher accuracies in the classification of agriculture land were noted with all the three decomposition techniques. The four parameters of Cloude–Pottier (H, A, α, β) and Touzi (α _s, Φ _s, ψ, τ) decompositions improved the classification accuracy for all the classes due to eigenvalues. The overall classification accuracy was above 88% for both the decomposition techniques with four parameters. The soil moisture values for agriculture land and sand dunes were validated through soil moisture maps generated using Oh 1992 and 2004 models.     

生态安全条件下亚洲沙区土地利用结构研究

基于数字地图与遥感影像资料,通过分析土地利用格局与沙尘传输关系,研究了生态安全条件下土地利用结构优化的模式、方法与技术。研究表明：①亚洲生态安全条件下的土地利用/覆盖宏观三圈格局为: 内圈以自然保护为主的沙漠地带;中圈以建设人工草地为主,辅以大面积自然恢复的草原地带;外圈以农、林、牧复合为主的交错地带。中国处在宏观三圈格局的中东部,北方沙区是影响东亚沙尘暴的重要源区。②中国半干旱沙区土地利用呈现微观三圈模式,基于RS数据,依据“大面积搞生态,小面积搞生产”的原则进行的土地利用结构优化,提出了外圈沙丘地恢复天然草地生态用地——中圈草原地带大面积搞生态—小面积搞牧业生产——内圈甸子地高效农业生产用地的生态—生产范式。③典型区科尔沁沙地土地利用结构优化的成套技术,可为类似地区政府土地利用决策与生态补偿机制提供支持。     

Indigenous mobilities,territorialization, and dispossession in the Sierra de Perijá, Venezuela: Rescuing lands and meanings in Hábitat Indígena Yukpa,Toromo-Tütari

In the Sierra de Perijá, Venezuela, the indigenous Yukpa have long faced reterritorialization and violent displacement through the expansion of cattle farms, so-called haciendas. However, the new Venezuelan constitution in 2000 guaranteed rights to indigenous territory and ushered in an endogenous, community-based development model. By the 2010s, Yukpa had reclaimed a half-dozen haciendas, taking advantage of the political leverage and economic opportunities provided by the endogenous development model. This process of deterritorialization has been accompanied by extensive migration of residents from mountain communities to the lowlands, and these reconfigurations of Yukpa spatiality have prompted reconceptualization of a diasporic, multi-sited indigenous identity.     

Ecological Entrepreneurship Support Networks: Roles and functions for conservation organizations

Changing social and economic drivers of land use require a more integrated approach to land conservation that addresses both the land and the socio-economic context of land use. Technical and legal conservation focused at the single-parcel scale is insufficient. This research examines ecological entrepreneurship, discussed by Marsden and Smith (2005), as an integrated conservation strategy that targets environmental as well as economic goals. Specifically, we explore the roles and functions that must be provided by Ecological Entrepreneurship Support Networks (EESNs). In particular, we look at land trusts engaging in these efforts. Through a series of case studies, we examine the roles and functions, as well as motivations and challenges faced by land trusts involved in EESNs. The lessons learned through these case studies are intended to inform broader sustainable development efforts.     

Dodging alligators,rattlesnakes, and backyard docks: a political ecology of sweetgrass basket-making and conservation in the South Carolina Lowcountry,USA

There is growing recognition among political ecologists of the need to examine shifting natural resource regimes and their effects on livelihoods in “First World” places. This emerging literature has variously examined the “Third World within,” the persistence of “subsistence activities” in the “First World,” and the “reterritorialization” of land tenure and access. However, much of this work has tended to focus on traditional extractive industries in the American West, indigenous claims to lands and resources in the U.S. and Canada, and non-timber resources on public lands. In contrast, we use a case study of African-American sweetgrass basket-makers, associated with the Gullah culture, in South Carolina’s lowcountry to examine the ways in which ongoing amenity-driven residential development is fundamentally reshaping resource access on private lands. Historically, basket-makers harvested the materials (primarily sweetgrass or Mulenbergia filipes) needed for their culturally important art form from accessible, rural, and privately held tracts of land in close proximity to their communities, but development pressures and changes in resident interpretation of property rights has decreased access to basket-making resources. The case is particularly illuminating, as it examines the emergence of ‘conservation subdivisions’ in the region and raises important questions about what “rural uses” and users are being conserved through responses to exurban, suburban, and urban development in formerly rural areas.     

Characteristic analyses,simulations and predictions of land use in poor mountainous cities: a case study in the central area of Chengde County,China

Mountainous areas account for approximately 69% of the land area in China, and these areas are prone to poverty. Thus, analyzing the land use characteristics and conducting simulations and prediction studies of poor cities in mountainous areas are important research topics. The land use change processes and characteristics in Chengde County, Hebei Province, China were analyzed in this paper based on the spatial distributions and temporal changes of land use types. Fourteen driving factors and five land use types were used in performing binary logistic regression analysis. The dynamic conversion of land use and its effects model was used to simulate the land use distributions, which were further simulated under three scenarios in 2021: natural growth, ecological conservation and accelerated development. The results show that the ecological conservation scenario optimized the land use distribution and effectively protected the environment, thereby increasing the suitability of future development. Based on the research results, this paper concludes that the correct development directions in the future should include preparing accurate and effective policies, promoting industrial structure reform, driving economic transformations and improvements, and improving the land use efficiency. The experimental results provide significant technical support for preparing and revising land use plans in poor mountainous cities.